The corridor was long and bright with industrial track lighting. It appeared as a never-ending tunnel asking her to make a run for it to nowhere. Her fate had been sealed hours ago. When she finally reached the airport, the departures board confirmed she had missed her flight.
A dread settled in. The uncertainty of being able to book the same direct destination where her friends were now headed. The sadness that she would miss out on the group activities planned for them all. This all could’ve been avoided.
Sarah had stayed the night at David’s flat, so she could leave her car with him while she was away, and he could take her to the airport. The evening over there had turned into a fiasco. Some of his mates had come by. The riotous conversation led to shattered glass, which led to jewelry accidentally falling off into the trashcan, which led to a filthy dumpster dive in the search for it, cardboard boxes flying everywhere, and neighbors hollering out of their second-story window to quiet down.
As the time ticked by, Sarah was constantly doing the mental math of “we need to leave by this time, so I have this much time to check in at my gate.” To add to the mayhem, she kept pilfering through her luggage with indecision, removing items she really didn’t need to take. Why was she doing this to herself? Just leave it be. The minutes were cutting it close, but she still had to try. She roused David from his stupor on the couch, and they were in his pick-up truck and on the freeway in no time. It was late and the roads seemed desolate. This late at night, there was no traffic to contend with. She was so annoyed by the time they made it that she grabbed her own luggage with barely a glance back and bee-lined for the check-in counter.
The Air France ticket attendant was an older Indian man who immediately turned condescending when Sarah explained she’d missed her flight. He wanted to wield his authority like a disciplinary father figure to remind her there are consequences to all actions. Sarah was overly polite and fully contrite, to cajole a new ticket out of him. When she started walking towards the security line, a woman about her age strolled up to her and commented, “Why was he so rude?” It seemed obvious to Sarah that when you have a job dealing with people all day every day, the customer service facade sometimes breaks.
Despite a much later departure, things seemed to be going smoothly. What seemed bizarre was the almost empty plane. Like the long, vacant corridor when she arrived at the airport, alone in space. She was able to upgrade seats -no problem. All the racing had come to a stop. Rushing to relax.
In another time zone, she is seated outside of a bistro, sipping a coffee alone. It wasn’t so much the desire to travel with her group of friends, but the desire to be gone, be somewhere else. At this moment she has no agenda. There is no itinerary or plan until she catches up with her group tomorrow. The last twenty-four hours of chaos seemed a world away, a pointless futile exercise in how we create our own whirlwinds. It’s as if they are solely created to make us feel alive, whereas it’s really in the stillness of sitting and taking deep breaths.
*Image from Pinterest
**My vivid dreams can really keep me awake at night #surrealism